Mermaid Precinct (ARC)
Page 9
Torin shook his head and chuckled. “All right, try her last name.”
“No, that’s worse!” Jak held up his hands as if he was going to be struck. “Just let me call her the half-elf in peace.”
With a sigh, Torin said, “Very well.”
“And you’ve done a superlative job of distracting me from talking about the case.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Torin said defensively. “The Pirate Queen was poisoned, and we’re endeavoring to figure out who did it.”
“Can’t be that hard, can it?” Jak asked. “I mean, I assume she was killed on that boat of hers—what’s it called, the Rising Sun?”
“Rising Jewel, and yes, but that still is a wide field—there are forty-six people serving on that ship.”
Jak blinked. “That many? Wow. How do you need that many people just to sail a boat? I mean, you put up a sail, the wind blows it, what more do you need?”
Torin laughed. “Do you truly think that’s all there is to sailing?”
“Oh, and you know so much about it?”
“Well, I’ve never served on a sailing ship, if that’s what you mean, but I have studied seacraft. And as it happens, Danthres and I have talked to all forty-six of the Pirate Queen’s crew, and I can tell you exactly how you need so many people. There’s the quartermaster, who serves as the first mate of the ship, and then the sailing master, who is in charge of navigation. It isn’t simply a matter of putting up a sail, you have to know what direction to travel in.”
Grinning, Jak said, “You mean they don’t just leave it up to chance?”
“Very droll.” Torin smiled indulgently at the sarcastic comment. “There’s also a swordmaster, who’s in charge of weapons, and three boatswains, who serve as the quartermaster’s mates, in essence, supervising their instructions. There’s also a carpenter—”
“Oh, well, I could get work on a pirate ship, then.”
Torin smiled and continued. “—a healer, a cook, and a rigger, and everyone I just mentioned has at least one mate, sometimes two or three. Plus, there’s a cabin girl, four swabbies, and five sailors.”
“And one of them killed the Pirate Queen?”
“Unless they have a stowaway, yes.”
Jak frowned. “Why would anyone stow away on a pirate ship?”
“Committing murder certainly seems like one possible motive. The Pirate Queen, after all, has many enemies.”
“I suppose.” Jak reached for something on the table that wasn’t there. “We haven’t gotten our ales yet.”
“Very observant—you’ll make a detective yet.” Torin looked around, and saw no sign of Prova. “It is very crowded tonight.”
The rest of the inn was a wall of noise, as almost every table was filled with customers. However, one voice from a table behind Torin made itself heard.
“Whaddaya mean there’s no casserole?”
Turning around, Torin saw Prova standing nervously at a table that contained a dwarf and a human. The human was somewhat large, and was the one yelling.
“Only reason I came down t’this dump t’eat is ’cause the one thing that piece-of-shit bahrlan cook can do right is that damn casserole! Rest of th’food’s for shit!”
“I’m sorry, sir, p’raps you—”
The human stood up. “Ain’t good enough t—”
“For Xinf’s sake,” the human’s dwarf comrade said, “sit your ass down, Choll! We’ll just eat something else!”
“That shit-suckin’ bahrlan don’t make nothin’ good ’cept that casserole!”
“We didn’t come here for the food, we came here for the bard. Sit down!”
Choll sat down and said, “Fine, just get me ’nother ale.”
Prova nodded and quickly moved away from the table.
Torin had been ready to interfere in the situation—he was still in his armor of office, after all, as he hadn’t had time to go home and change clothes—but the dwarf had calmed Choll down enough that he wasn’t needed.
Jak stared at him. “You were going to interfere, weren’t you?”
“If necessary.”
“You’re off duty, Torin. You don’t have to get involved when you’re not even being paid.”
Torin smirked. “If nothing else, I had a certain interest in making sure that Prova didn’t get hurt before she brought us our ales.”
Chuckling, Jak said, “Fair point.”
“I didn’t know there’d be a bard this evening.”
Jak nodded. “That’s why I wanted to come tonight. I also wanted it to be a surprise. Medinn’s supposed to be performing.”
Torin was taken aback. “Medinn is back in town? I had no idea. He hasn’t been back since Lady Meerka’s birthday.”
“Yes, I heard he was going to be here tonight and then at that festival in Jayka Park next week. I remember you mentioning seeing him back last year.”
Nodding, Torin said, “After he performed for Lady Meerka, he did several engagements in taverns throughout the city-state. I saw him at the Stone Kobold.” He smiled. “He even told a story of the Pirate Queen—he said he’d told it to Lady Meerka and she’d enjoyed it tremendously.”
Jak pointed to the front of the dining area. “Look, Olaf’s getting on the stage.”
Following his gesture, Torin saw that the round figure of the Dog and Duck’s proprietor was walking onto the raised platform at the front of the dining area where performers plied their trade.
Raising his short arms over his bald head, Olaf said something incomprehensible, but soon the crowd noise died down, as more and more people realized that the evening’s entertainment was about to start.
When the crowd noise had dimmed to a low susurrus of murmurs, Olaf said, “Hello to everyone who being here is, thank you!”
Torin hung his head. Olaf was from the islands to the east, but he’d been in Cliff’s End for almost two decades. The accent was, Torin knew, a silly affectation, but Olaf did insist on keeping it.
“I must regret to informing you be doing that Medinn will be performing not to us this evening that is fine.”
The susurrus grew louder and more agitated.
“A caravan he was to be arriving on yesterday from the Iaron place, but not arrive, that caravan has. Sorry I am being, but perform he cannot when here he is not.”
Torin nodded, understanding. Caravans to Cliff’s End were rarely prompt at the best of times, and it had been far from that since the fire in Barlin. Torin had to admit to being surprised that a professional of Medinn’s caliber would even make an engagement in Cliff’s End for anything sooner than a week after his scheduled arrival.
“Instead, we are having from Barlin a new performer! Please to be welcoming the harp player, Tarsos Fann!”
There was a smattering of applause, but not as much as Torin would have expected.
“What the shit, Olaf?”
Turning, Torin saw that Choll, the disagreeable human, had stood up again.
“Choll, sit down,” his dwarven companion was saying, but Choll was having none of it.
“Bad enough we gotta share the damn streets with bahrlans, bad enough we gotta eat their food an’ watch ’em take our jobs, an’ mess up the whole damn city-state, now we gotta listen to their shit-suckin’ music, too? Hell with that!”
Torin moved to rise, but Jak put a hand on his arm. “Torin, don’t, please.”
“I’m sorry, Jak, but I cannot let him continue to disrupt things.” Shaking off his lover’s hand, he came away from the table and approached the human.
Even as he did, he heard several people making noises of agreement with Choll’s sentiments.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to sit down and remain silent.”
Choll folded his large arms over his barrel-shaped chest. “An’ what if I don’ wanna?”
The dwarf stood up. “You shitbrain, that’s a member of the Castle Guard! Will you please sit down?”
“Hell with it.” Choll unfolded his arms,
drank down the last of his ale, and slammed the mug on the table. “I ain’t stayin’ in this shithole. Let’s go, Maranig.”
The dwarf shot an apologetic look to Torin as he tossed a couple of silver pieces onto the table and followed Choll out the door.
While this had been going on, several other people got up and left the dining area, and a short man was setting up a harp on the stage. Torin assumed that to be Tarsos Fann.
As he returned to his table, he saw Olaf approaching.
“Thanking you I am doing, please, Lieutenant. I was worried that fight starting he would be doing.”
“Happy to be of help, as always, Olaf.”
“As usual,” Jak muttered.
Olaf wandered off and Torin sat back down at the table. “What’s wrong?” he asked Jak.
“You could’ve gotten yourself hurt if that toad had decided to get violent. He’s twice your size.”
“I’ve handled perps who were twice my size in the past,” Torin said with a smile.
But Jak wasn’t smiling. “He wasn’t a ‘perp,’ Torin, he was just a person expressing an opinion. And you all but kicked him out!”
“First of all, it was an idiotic opinion. Secondly, he was expressing it by shouting across a crowded dining room, which was very obviously designed to be provocative.”
“He was upset,” Jak said. “And can you blame him? This place has been a madhouse since all the people from Barlin came in. We only get to eat here because Olaf likes you and the half-elf, otherwise we’d never fit thanks to the damn bahrlans.”
“Oh, now they’re bahrlans, are they?” Torin wasn’t liking the tenor of this conversation at all.
Prova came by with their two ales, and a grateful smile. “Thanks, Torin, for gettin’ ridda that shitbrain. He comes in here every damn night and bitches and moans about the people from Barlin—an’ half the time, he tries to reach under my skirt! Anyhow, these two ales’re onna house.”
She smiled and walked away.
“Oh yes,” Torin said, “definitely just a person expressing an opinion.”
“He’s a piece of filth,” Jak replied, “but that doesn’t mean he was wrong. Do you know how much harder it’s been to get work since they arrived?”
“What happened to that theatrical production you were working on?”
Jak sipped his ale and then let out a belch. “They let me go. Apparently, they’re no longer doing The Fall of Iaron. I had an entire build set up for that, including several sections of the baron’s castle and a re-creation of the mountainside. But instead, they’re now doing a play from Barlin called Hoklo’s Revenge, which has no actual sets, merely two stools. So no carpenters needed, all so they can toady to the—” Jak cut himself off. “Dammit. Look, I’m sorry, Torin, I’m obviously in an abominable mood. I had been counting on that theatre gig.”
Torin put his hand on Jak’s. “I understand, of course. Look, I’ll pay for dinner tonight, and then we can go back to my place for a proper apology.”
Jak grinned. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”
The sound of strings rang out through the dining room as Fann started to tune his harp. Again, the room started to quiet down, and Fann started to play.
His third note was very obviously off. So was his fifth. And his tenth.
Torin winced.
“Are you all right?” Jak asked.
“I’m fine.” But then another wrong note, and he winced again.
“Is the music that bad?” Jak asked.
Recalling that his lover was tone-deaf, Torin said, “Back home in Myverin, some of my earliest training had been in music and art. You see, I was being groomed to replace my father as Chief Artisan once Grandfather died and my father was elevated to the role of High Magistrate. So I’m afraid I’m painfully aware in minute detail just how horrible this musician is.”
Fortunately for him, Jak was oblivious to the wrong notes and bad tuning of the harp. Unfortunately for Fann, Torin was not the only one in the dining hall who was less than impressed.
“Get off’a stage!”
“You’re wretched!”
“Like a hobgoblin stranglin’ a moose!”
“Go back to Barlin where you belong, shitbrain!”
“Yeah, if you’d stayed in Barlin, your harp woulda burned, and we’d all be better off!”
“Filthy bahrlan!”
“Go bang your head against it, it’ll sound better!”
By the time the song was over, people were starting to throw their food at Fann.
“Typical bahrlan,” Jak muttered.
Torin sighed, and watched as Fann left the stage in a hurry, pursued by flung food.
TWELVE
Danthres was surprised to see the squadroom completely empty at the beginning of the shift.
Captain Dru and Sergeant Jonas were both in the pantry, eating Jonas’s wife’s usual offering of morning pastries.
Going inside to partake of her own share of same, Danthres asked, “Where is everyone?”
“Well, your partner’s late,” Dru said with a grin.
“That’s hardly news,” Danthres said with a dubious expression right back at him. “And you’ve got pastry flakes in your beard.”
The grin widened. “Yeah, ain’t it great? I’m likin’ this beard thing.” Flicking the offending crumbs out of his nascent facial hair, Dru went on: “Manfred and Kellan worked two straight shifts—they spent the night down at the docks tryin’a catch the graffiti artist. No luck, so I sent ’em home to sleep it off, and they’ll come back at it tomorrow mornin’.”
Danthres took a perverse pleasure in their having trouble maintaining their idiotic streak, but said nothing, as that pleasure warred with her hating to see a case not get put down, regardless of the circumstances.
“Aleta an’ Dannee’re down at the Seagull with Boneen. Dannee figured first thing in the morning, the Seagull was pretty likely t’be empty. ’Cept for last night’s drunks, anyhow, an’ Aleta can take care’a them, no problem.”
“Yes, but then we’ll have more homicides on our hands,” Danthres said dryly as she grabbed a pastry. “Very well. I sent one of the youth squad to Mermaid to request that someone bring us our witness from the Rising Jewel.”
“Good. We can have a contest to see who gets here first, the witness or Torin.”
Danthres chuckled. “He went out with Jak last night, my money would be on Rodolfo.”
“That’s the Pirate Queen’s kid, right?”
Nodding, Danthres said, “And I’m still not entirely sure he knows that. If he does, he becomes our best suspect. If he doesn’t, though, it’s going to devastate him.”
Jonas swallowed a pastry and then asked, “Should I even bother doing the morning rundown?”
Dru grinned. “Just do it in here. I’m still hungry, and it’s just us three anyhow.”
Shuffling parchments, Jonas said, “Whatever you say, Captain.”
Danthres rolled her eyes a bit. Jonas had worked for years under Captain Osric, who had brought a certain relaxed military efficiency to the detective squad. With Dru—after the brief, pathetic reign of Captain Grovis, which had only lasted as long as the equally brief and pathetic reign of Lord Blayk—it was really only the relaxed part. Dru came up through the ranks of the Castle Guard, and unlike Osric, who came straight from being an army general, and certainly unlike his predecessor Brisban, whose death was one of the few Danthres had ever celebrated, Dru had consideration for the workaday guards and lieutenants that neither previous captain had truly had. For that reason, he ran a much more casual squadroom than even Osric had.
While Danthres had no problem with that, indeed rather enjoyed it, a year later, Jonas still hadn’t adjusted.
Reading off one parchment, Jonas said, “Dragon Precinct is reporting a disturbance in the Dog and Duck last night. A bard from Barlin was performing and was booed off the stage. Nobody was hurt, but it’s the fifth incident at the Dog and Duck involving refugees.”
“Torin was there last night,” Danthres said. “That was where he and Jak went for dinner. I wonder if he was present for that.”
“Maybe we’re lucky,” Dru said, “an’ he’s the reason there wasn’t a bigger disturbance.”
“Hope so.”
Jonas shuffled to another parchment. “Manticore Precinct has reported five prisoners trying to jump overboard since word got out that the Pirate Queen’s boat is in dock.”
“Five?” Dru dropped both his jaw and his pastry. “Shit. That’s what we usually get in a month, not a day.”
“Wait, what? You mean to tell me that every month five shitbrains actually try to escape the barge?” Danthres still had a hard time thinking of the prison barge that sailed the Garamin Sea and housed all of Cliff’s End’s prisoners as a precinct, even though Lord Doval had transformed it into Manticore Precinct and folded its staff into the Castle Guard.
“On average.” Dru shook his head. “I didn’t realize it was that many until we started gettin’ reports from ’em after they got made part’a the Guard. It’s nuts—I mean, it ain’t like it’s a secret that the bracelets they wear get heavy when you leave the boat.”
“Every time I think I’ve underestimated the populace of this city-state, something reminds me that I generally overestimate it.”
“You an’ Torin better close this Pirate Queen murder fast. Mannit’s crawlin’ up my ass ’bout the extra guards to keep the gawkers away.”
“Honestly, he can let them run wild,” Danthres said. “Boneen has warded the area around the ship, so only members of the Castle Guard can get on or off the boat. For that matter, the boat itself is pretty heavily warded, so I doubt anyone could just get on.”
“Nah, ’cause the carpenter’s guild is tryin’a join Mannit up my ass. They don’t like havin’ so many people near the construction zone. Hell, some’a the boardwalks ain’t done yet, and they ain’t been stress tested yet. Folks could fall in.”
“And join the five monthly prisoners at the bottom of the Garamin?” Danthres asked with a smile.
“Yeah.” Dru snorted. “Look, we need to get that boat the hell outta here, so hurry up with this.”